A jet from Changi International Airport in Singapore landed at Newark Liberty International Airport earlier this week, marking the end of the world's longest nonstop commercial flight, The Star-Ledger reports, Singapore Airlines having put an end to their 19-hour trip due to low profits.
The news wasn't easy to hear for some frequent flyers, including Ken Jongsma, an engineer with Honeywell who has taken the lengthy flight several times for business.
"It's long no matter how you cut it but it beats spending time in an airport trying to make connections," Jongsma told the Star-Ledger. "Once I'm en route, I want to be there in the shortest time possible. "Spending time in an airport waiting to make connections isn't fun."
No other flights from the U.S. to Singapore are non-stop, and travelers will now have to add up to five hours to their journeys via a flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York with a layover in Frankfurt, Germany. Singapore Airlines ended their other non-stop flight to the Southeast Asian country from Los Angeles on Oct. 22.
The 19-hour flight carried 100 business-class passengers on an Airbus A340 jumbo jet in spacious rows of four. With 36-inch wide seats that reclined into flat beds, passengers were treated to 15-inch video monitors featuring 243 available movies, "358 television shows, 800 music CDs, 22 radio channels and 80 video games."
"We want the passenger to come away from the overall experience feeling they've been looked after," James Bradbury-Boyd, a spokesman for the Singapore Airlines, said to the Star-Ledger.
Such luxury didn't come cheap, however, as tickets cost between $6,000 and $8,000 roundtrip. But the daily route, which began in 2008, didn't earn the airline enough profit, according to Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst at industry consulting firm, Hudson Crossing.
"Supporting the aircraft doesn't outweigh the cost involved. You need parts for this plane and there are only a handful available," Harteveldt said. "It's a shame this route didn't work out, but I would bet in a few years it might be reopened," Harteveldt said. "It's one of those long, thin [low-demand] routes that might be viable if it flew a few times a week."
Airbus stopped producing A340s in 2011, and Singapore Airlines employed five rotating jets for the Newark and L.A. routes, all of which required routine maintenance. The additional higher cost of fuel (a jump from $28.88 a barrel when the route began to $107 today) also contributed to the airline's decision to end its non-stop international flights.
